1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a portable scanning system and more particularly relates to a versatile attachment of a mobile scanner to a portable computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are many applications that need optical scanners to convert paper-based objects, such as texts and graphics, to an electronic format that can be subsequently analyzed, distributed and archived. One of the most popular optical scanners is flatbed scanners that convert scanning objects, including pictures and papers, to images that can be used, for example, for building World Wide Web pages and optical character recognition. Another popular optical scanner is what is called sheet-fed scanners that are small and unobtrusive enough to sit between a keyboard and a computer monitor or integrated into a keyboard to provide a handy scanning means. Most optical scanners are referred to as image scanners as the output thereof is generally in digital image format.
With the increasing popularity of notebook computers, there is an emerging need for scanners that are even smaller to be carried around like an accessory to the notebook computers. For example, a journalist goes far away from a news bureau to collect information about an important event somewhere. It is considerably useful if a portable or mobile scanner can be used to scan document on site into a computer that then forwards the electronic versions to the news bureau for immediate news reporting or archival. In the applications like the news reporting, handheld scanners have been used in the past. To be compact, many of the handheld scanners are manually operated, namely a user has to hold a handheld scanner over a scanning document to move from one end to another end so as to scan in the entire scanning document. However, the quality of images is not always satisfactory, typically suffering from jittered motions of the manual operations.
With the emergence of sheet-fed scanners, such as those Paper Port series from Visioneer Inc., handheld scanners are gradually replaced by the sheet-fed scanners. Because a sheet-fed scanner operates automatically, namely a scanning document is well controlled to pass through an image sensor in the sheet-fed scanner, the resultant images are generally satisfactory. FIG. 1 illustrates a typical setting for a mobile scanner 100 in operation with a laptop computer 102 as a host computer. Mobile scanner 100 is connected, through a communication cable 104 to laptop computer 102 that comprises a lid 106 and base 108. Lid 106 including a screen panel 110 that can be flipped open to a suitable position so that a user can read screen panel 110 and base 108 includes main electronic parts therein and is topped with a keyboard 112.
Not really suggested by the name, laptop computer 102 or base 108 is often placed on a flat area for comfortable operation, except it requires much smaller area than a desktop computer does. However, an accessory like a mobile scanner is used together with a computer, a much large space is typically required. For example, many business people use a laptop computer on their trip, often performing tasks in an airplane, the trays in front of the chairs in the airplane are just large enough to hold a laptop computer and thus leaves no extra space for a mobile scanner. It is indeed awkward to hold a mobile scanner by one hand and operate the computer by another hand. There is therefore a long and waited need for a versatile attachment of a mobile scanner to a laptop computer, which provides easy use of the mobile scanner without interfering normal operation of the laptop computer.